All posts tagged ‘startup’

Political satire in the U.S. has enjoyed many champions, from Mark Twain to Will Rogers to Stephen Colbert. Humor has become as much a part of American politics as voting. In this hotly contested Presidential election year, the campaigns of powerful people have been mocked in unprecedented numbers thanks to YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook.

Though the dust is freshly settled on the latest election, there is still time to laugh. Last month, Laffster — a new startup that helps optimize discovery and personalization around everything funny online — announced the release of a free iPhone application, Mock the Vote. The mobile app delivers a live feed of political humor that includes a mix of original content and curated selections from popular satirical sources, like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The Onion. The app also encourages people to declare their political leanings before rating videos, allowing Laffster to generate streams with featured content that resonates best with Democrats, Republicans or Independents. Continue Reading “Mock the Vote Eases Discovery of Political Humor” »

This is not, despite the headline, about the discovery of some nanotech method for growing entire hard-drives or even simple components; rather, it’s about the employees of Backblaze, an online backup service, and how they, their spouses, friends, and neighbors spent months scouring local big-box stores in search of the hard-drives that were the lifeblood of the startup. The entire ordeal was recently chronicled over at the company’s site, and it makes for both an entertaining read and a revealing peek behind the scenes at what it’s like to run a scrappy internet startup company.

Why didn’t Backblaze just order drives in bulk from a distributor or manufacturer? Well, that’s what they originally did. Unfortunately, the flooding in Thailand in 2011 crippled production at the factories that produce the majority of the world’s hard drives. The loss of production capacity meant that the price of a 3TB drive suddenly jumped from $129 to $349, and for a shoestring startup that was adding 50TB of storage per day, that meant trouble.

The solution the Backblazers hit upon was to start hitting up the local Costco, Best Buy, and other consumer electronics retailers. Those big-box operations had large contracts with the manufacturers that meant they continued to be supplied with stock at pre-flood prices. Unfortunately, those places quickly limited the number of drives they would allow a customer to purchase, and also began banning Backblaze employees from buying drives. All of that meant that Backblaze had to expand their operation and begin recruiting family and friends as drive “farmers.”

Using the Burst application, Olympic athletes are showing behind-the-scenes action as they compete for Olympic medals.

Despite the success and high level of competition among its athletes, the 2012 Olympic games will be known for the way in which NBC and the Olympic governing body controlled access to live events. Rather than embrace the benefits of a digitally-connected world, they fought against the modern world under the banner of media rights. Time-delayed broadcast is a method for an era that did not include social media, streaming video, and a collective willingness to engage with online content.

One tech company, Boston-based Burst, has found a way to work within restrictive Olympic guidelines and still provide access to some of the athletes enjoying London’s hospitality.

Burst is a private network for sharing videos and pictures with small groups of friends and family. To celebrate the spectacle of the Olympic games, Burst arranged for three participating athletes to provide a glimpse of their experience in the Olympic village as they prepared for time on the global stage. Olympic athletes Donn Cabral (track), Dagmara Wozniak and Tim Morehouse (fencing) are using Burst while in London to show behind-the-scenes action as they compete for medals.

“The core for us is private families, but the tool can be used in other ways,” says Paul Levy, COO of Burst.

Originally designed to support youth sports, Burst launched earlier this summer with a mission to lower the barriers to sharing personal content by raising the focus on privacy and control. The company points to a recent independent study of 400 consumers which found 52 percent consider open sites a barrier to posting videos or photos. Instead of broadcasting to everyone, the service provides a means for parents to share precious personal moments in their lives, from baby’s first steps to a double in a Little League game. Only members of their inner circles who would be deeply interested in watching those videos are able to do so.

“We all have kids,” says Levy of his Burst co-founders. “We had our smartphone to take photos and videos, but it is so darn hard to share those selectively with people who care and not my 482 friends on Facebook who maybe don’t care so much about my son’s double in little league. To a few people — my parents in the Boston area, my in-laws in Florida — that’s a meaningful moment.”

“I’ve got a group set up for the Westport Wreckers, my son’s football team,” Levy continues, “which has got 30 parents in there. For my daughter’s softball team, I’ve got 20 parents in that one. When I’m at the game capturing videos, I just instantly Burst it to them, and before they get to the car, they’ve got a curated highlight reel, those ten moments in the game of their daughters and sons they will have forever.”

While there is a free smartphone application and an integrated website to help members manage, distribute and archive memories captured digitally, you don’t have to be a Burst user to receive videos from someone else. The notifications are handled through email, using that platform as a form of verification that the links are being viewed by the desired people. The human-powered nature of curation prevents many of the problems with questionable content that arise in public platforms. Groups can be created to grant access to specific sets of videos. If so inclined, Burst videos can also be shared to Facebook.

“Facebook’s brand isn’t about private select sharing,” explains Levy. “That is a place to be public and out there. Generally the people you are Bursting to are your small close-knit groups, not people you don’t know or trust.”

Burst is evolving. The company plans to develop integrated printing capabilities that allow members to publish a physical form of their media, and Burst will be releasing a new feature this month called “Bubbles” to encourage spontaneous event-based contributions from people nearby. “At the end of the two hours, the bubble bursts and everyone gets access to the content that was created. It’s a nice way to get participation from the community,” says Levy.

The Olympic Bursts are a new way the company is exploring the value of semi-public content. An athlete like Tim Morehouse — who attended nearby Brandeis University — can use the service for VIP access, with exclusive videos that aren’t meant to be distributed widely. It offers fans a different kind of celebrity engagement, one that can just as easily be leveraged for charitable fundraising as personal brand.

Cabral will remain in London until August 13 and already has his eye on 2016 game in Rio. Morehouse — who has a strong presence on Twitter and other channels as well — is filling his free time overseas with fencing lessons, talks at local schools, explaining his sport to Elmo, defending his teammates from media attacks, and enjoying some sightseeing with his fiance. Moorehouse also has a book about how he fell in love with swordfighting.

“It’s more engaging to receive video content from that person as opposed to just getting an email,” says Levy.

One of the challenges for the newest generation is how to gain fluency in online networking without being able to draw on large, diverse social networks of their own. Today, Togetherville announced the open beta launch of a new online community for kids and their caretakers. The site brings parents into the same virtual space as their children to help them mentor kids to be good digital citizens.

Togetherville is a digital training ground for kids

“We built Togetherville using the spirit of the neighborhoods most of us remember when we were kids,” said co-founder, CEO, and parent Mandeep Singh Dhillon, “where everyone knows everyone else and watches out for each other. In Togetherville, parents have peace of mind that their kids are playing with people they know and trust and kids have fun while learning the tools they need to become good digital citizens.”

Fully compliant with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Togetherville is intended for kids who are too young for Facebook, officially, but have parents immersed in that culture. The 6- to 10-year-olds are invited to engage with their real-world friends, play games, watch videos, and create art. Grownups act as the gateways for new contacts, assuming the responsibility for inviting other families to join each child’s online neighborhood. Experiencing online networking together, grownups can guide their kids through the age-appropriate content in an ad-free environment.

The project was developed by people trained in child development, learning, and online safety. Developers worked with officials from Connect Safely and the Family Online Safety Institute to include the social and technical activities that serve as the core competency for online interaction. Three key areas—self-expression, entertainment, and education—are emphasized. “Togetherville is social-networking training wheels for families,” said Anne Collier, co-director of Connect Safely. “It models safe social-Web use for kids and shows even parents who are already keen Facebook users how social networking works best in the family context.”

One aspect of the site that is still pending is an Allowance, a feature expected later this summer. Grownups feed an account for their children, and the kids draw from those funds to purchase virtual goods, games, and gifts. There are learning opportunities possible in this dynamic, including understanding how to budget or cultivating a sense of philanthropy in how kids choose to use their online currency. It seems clear that the financial success of the company is tied to being able to create a strong in-world economy funded by adults but driven by kids.

Kid-Tested

My ten-year-old son gave the site a test drive after the private beta opened up to the public. He’s at the top side of target audience for Togetherville, already well familiar with Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and creating YouTube videos. His literacy with social networking sites is strong, but his strong social connections remain firmly offline.

The signup, initiated by a parent, uses Facebook authentication to verify the adult’s identity and leverage his or her existing social network. The parent then creates accounts for each kid, customized with a photo and name that reflects who they are in the real-world. To increase accountability and trust in subsequent interactions, anonymity and pseudonyms are discouraged. The accounts are verified via email to ensure that the kids are firmly tied to the grownup’s online identity.

From the moment they first sign on, kids are encouraged to get involved with activities on the site by earning stamps in their Togetherville Passport. This can be done by watching a video, creating new art, playing a game, sending a gift, or posting a “quip” (the equivalent of a Facebook status message). Additional badges are designed to recognize and reward positive behavior for certain types of activities.

My son opted to play a game to start, choosing Fission Balls from among the six initial offerings. It was a short-lived game (he fired a single shot), but he then moved on to creating a logo and giving a gift to a new friend. He rejected the featured videos—Hannah Montana, Justin Bieber, and the tempting “Fart Dance”—but watched a Toy Story trailer from YouTube just to satisfy his Passport stamp. For someone well-versed in Internet memes, the video content wasn’t that engaging. (“It feels like they are trying to get Cartoon Network or Disney to sponsor them,” says my young curmudgeon.)

One strength of the site—moderated content—is also a potential drawback. There are numerous Quips and Comments from which to choose, but they are all canned responses approved by Togetherville administrators. The few opportunities to freely create text require review and acceptance by staff before they will appear on the site. This was a turnoff for my son: “It’s like they are saying that kids don’t have the ingenuity to come up with their own posts.”

The grownup’s experience centers around managing the parameters of a child’s neighborhood. Their profile simply shows the associations to other kids, and content contributions are largely in support of kid activities within the site. The favoriting mechanism in Togetherville—a “trunk”—can serve as both a digital memory book and a monitoring tool to see what kinds of important items float to the surface. For adults, activity can be piped into their Facebook news stream to share with friends in that environment.

At its best, Togetherville has the potential to both fulfill its mission as a training ground while also increasing interaction with trusted adult mentors outside of the family. A broader support structure can help kids critique ideas and develop additional methods for information gathering. At its worst, Togetherville will suffer from over-reliance on users with access to strong extended networks, presenting too many barriers to grow online networks organically. Without a lifetime of changing jobs, schools, and hometowns, kids may see value in the site limited to what they can do online by themselves, rather than with others.